The Twins Are Moving On from Pete Maki. What's Next?

A Change Was Coming

Since 2024, the Twins have finished 21st or worse in MLB in team ERA each season. They ranked 25th in 2026, and eventually, enough was enough. There have been plenty of individual bright spots along the way. Joe Ryan established himself as a legitimate frontline starter when healthy, while Pablo López has shown that same kind of upside during his time in Minnesota. But both pitchers have dealt with injuries, and the Twins have never quite been able to put everything together around them.

That distinction is important. Pitchers get hurt; that's baseball. But there's also no denying that the Twins needed more from their pitching staff, particularly outside of their top arms, and that simply didn't happen consistently enough.

Bailey Ober is perhaps the clearest example of that frustration. He entered the 2024 season as a dark horse Cy Young candidate after a breakout 2023 campaign, but that never materialized. Zebby Matthews has yet to establish himself as a reliable major-league starter, while the Simeon Woods Richardson experiment ultimately failed to produce the consistency Minnesota was hoping for. And that's really been the story of the middle and back of the Twins' rotation. Too much potential, not enough consistency. Too many "what-if" questions.

It Wasn't All on the Coaches

Still, I don't think it's fair to look at the Twins' pitching struggles and place all the blame on Maki and Ramirez. In fact, the bullpen had arguably been the biggest strength of Minnesota's roster not long ago. Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, Louis Varland and others had formed one of the better late-inning groups in baseball in 2025. Then, the organization blew it up.

Minnesota traded away several key pieces at last year's deadline, leaving Maki and the rest of the pitching staff with a bullpen that was a shell of what it had been the year before. Had that group remained intact, it's entirely possible the Twins would still be playing baseball right now. But it didn't, and the team did very little last offseason to replace that lost talent.

That raises a legitimate question about the decision to move on from the coaching staff: How much of the pitching staff's struggles were because of coaching, and how much were the result of the organization putting those coaches in a difficult position? There isn't a perfect answer to that question.

There's also another possible factor. Maybe Maki and Ramirez simply weren't Derek Shelton's guys. New managers often want to put their own stamp on a coaching staff, and if Shelton believes a different voice or philosophy is needed, replacing the pitching coaches gives him an opportunity to do that.

"Ultimately, as we assessed where things were at, we thought it was best-served to go with a new voice and restructure how our pitching coach department was gonna function," Jeremy Zoll told the press on Tuesday. "With each year that goes on, the game continues to evolve, and we're seeing an opportunity here to restructure things with some different skill sets and a fresh voice."

Barring an exceptional season from the pitching staff, it's possible this was a move that was always going to happen, regardless of how much responsibility Maki and Ramirez deserved for the results. That's all speculation, though. Regardless of where the blame belongs, the fact remains that the Twins will have new pitching coaches in 2027. The more interesting question now is what Minnesota should be looking for.

The Next Voice Needs to Unlock the Rotation

Minnesota's search has to start with someone who can get more out of the back of the starting rotation. There just hasn't been enough consistency there. The Twins should have several options to work with next season in the middle-to-back end of their rotation, including Taj Bradley, Mick Abel, Connor Prielipp and Matthews. All of those pitchers have shown flashes of stuff that can make them legitimate major-league starters.

What they haven't shown is that they can consistently turn that talent into production at the highest level. That's where the next pitching coach comes in. Minnesota doesn't need someone to completely reinvent the pitching staff. They need someone who can take the talent already in the organization and help turn more of it into reliable major-league production. 

"We think there's an opportunity to restructure things, to create a fresh voice and new message, and see real value in that and bring in a different set of strengths and weaknesses and how the team all functions," Zoll said. "I think we accomplished that this year on the hitting coach front ... But it's not to say that the people that we previously had in those roles—they've gone on to do really good things too. So, you're just trying to make it all fit for the group you have and the moment in time that you're at on that journey."

A New Era for Twins Pitching

The Twins' decision to move on from Maki and Ramirez isn't going to solve everything by itself. The organization still has to build a better pitching staff, keep its best arms healthy, and find answers for a rotation that has been far too inconsistent over the last several years. A pair of new pitching coaches should give Minnesota a chance to approach those problems differently. The team is likely to invest significantly in the pitching staff this winter; they need someone standing ready to make good on that investment.